


the lucky ones

by brighterthanstars



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Magic, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22210057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brighterthanstars/pseuds/brighterthanstars
Summary: “Hey,” A soft voice says, it’s almost as soft as the hands. Auston really hopes it’s the same person, “Hey, you’re going to be okay, yeah? Don’t worry.”When he looks in the direction of the voice, he’s met with the bluest eyes he’s probably ever seen; He promptly passes out again.Or, Auston doesn't really understand what's going on until he does but he's still trying.
Relationships: Mitch Marner/Auston Matthews
Comments: 1
Kudos: 45





	the lucky ones

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this thing i started to write literally three years ago, I don't think I've read it since but i love it.  
Thanks to everyone who had to read me bitching about it, y'all are the real ones.

Auston wakes up slowly, his whole left side hurts and his face feels sticky wet. There’s people around him and they are screaming way too loud, he kind of feels like dying.

There are soft hands in his head, in his hair, in his forehead, cradling his face.

“Hey,” A soft voice says, it’s almost as soft as the hands. Auston really hopes it’s the same person, “Hey, you’re going to be okay, yeah? Don’t worry.”

When he looks in the direction of the voice, he’s met with the bluest eyes he’s probably ever seen; He promptly passes out again.

* * *

It’s probably the pain that wakes Auston up again, he’s not on the floor this time and he’s not lying on his side anymore either - he seems to be lying on a cot, on his back, it’s better but it’s still uncomfortable as fuck. The place looks like a tent, from what he can see, full of beds and messy but somehow clean. There are cauldrons stirring themselves and smokes that smell good seemingly everywhere.

He doesn’t know how exactly he got there but he’s not complaining. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people around him, but those who are are sleeping and thankfully no one’s screaming this time. He can hear two voices arguing though, one of those sounds like the soft hands guy.

“I just don’t understand what you’re doing bringing him here! You know he’s a Slytherin, Mitch,” The voice he doesn’t recognize stage whispers.

“Oh, and what’s that supposed to mean? I was already a Slytherin when you met me, Dyls.”

“That’s not the point! I just don’t get why you brought him here! And I met you on the train so technically, you weren’t a Slytherin yet.”

“I couldn’t leave him there to die, Dylan what the fuck?!”

Auston tries, he really tries, because that conversation sounds pretty interesting but he can’t suppress the groan of pain that escapes him when he tries to move to see who’s talking about him.

He gets two pairs of eyes on him instantly from the other side of the tent and yep, one of those are the pretty ones from before.

“Oh, hi!” Blue-eyed-guy says while the other one scoffs, “You’re awake.”

Auston groans again, he just can’t seem to get comfortable, “Yeah… yeah, hi.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Sore? I don’t know,” he grunts, “But it’s okay.”

“Well, Mitch here did a pretty good job patching you up, so,” A new, third voice says, “I’m Connor, nice to meet you.”

Mitch, apparently that’s his name, blushes all the way to the tip of his ears and scrambles away to check on someone else.

Auston watches him smile down to another boy, and can’t help but think he looks good when he smiles. For whatever reason that feels like something he’s used to thinking.

Connor’s grin looks soft and strangely knowing – of what exactly, Auston has no idea – “I’ll let you rest,” he says as he gets up and turns to leave, “Oh! Welcome.”

* * *

This is what he found out about the place: This place is kind of an itinerary circus (Dylan’s words, not his) that they keep moving to try to keep safe from the ongoing war happening everywhere. They don’t want anything to do with it, though Auston finds out pretty early on that they’ve lost people and friends to it already.

They are just trying to survive by staying together.

* * *

It doesn’t escape Auston, the irony of the situation, how he ended up doing exactly what his Uncle wanted him to do without trying. Without wanting to.

* * *

The night is cold and it looks like it may start snowing anytime now. He’ll have to borrow some more clothes if that happens.

Connor is silent next to him, wide-awake and alert despite the late hour. They are sitting by the entrance of the Mitch’s tent just as someone does every night.

He’d asked or at least tried to, but it seems like no one wants to answer. It usually leads to Dylan cursing his guts and glaring at the ground while Connor and Leon look away.

Auston’s pretty sure there’s something there, something that not everybody knows but that they know and are choosing not to tell. He hopes it’s not something he’s ever asked to get, he’s not entirely sure where his loyalty really lies these days.

He puffs his breath to warm his hands and sighs a little dramatically just to do something. He can see Connor looking at him from the corner of his eye and chooses to ignore him. He gets a good look at the many emotions going through Connor’s face when he turns almost completely to him.

“He’s the secret keeper,” Connor says, out of nowhere. Auston must look really lost because he clarifies a second later, “Mitch. You wanted to know why we’re always close to him, right? It’s because of that.”

Oh. Oh. “That’s complicated, isn’t it?”

Connor closes his eyes and lays his head back against the door. He has never looked so tired. “A little, yeah. No one knows what it is, obviously, or it wouldn’t be a secret but still… we know he can protect himself but we’re just trying to keep him extra safe. Mitch’s like… I guess he’s like our own lionheart, you know?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can tell, I know.”

And, god dammit, he’s no Dylan Strome but Auston curses his own guts anyway.

* * *

Sometimes when he wakes up, right in that moment between being asleep and waking up Auston gets these flashes of a feeling, like the weight of another body next to his, a flash of a smile and sparkly eyes. Of happiness.

He’s really tired of these barely-awake daydreams.

* * *

Everyone seems to know more about him than he does about them; it’s not exactly weird, just a little odd. Like right now.

Dylan still doesn’t talk to him unless it’s necessary but he’s still polite enough to offer him a piece of an apple pie thing they got Merlin-knows-where. He grimaces a little.

“Thanks but I don’t like ap-“

“He doesn’t like apples, Dyls- Uh.” Mitch interrupts him. He looks like he wasn’t planning on saying that, like it’s a normal thing for him to do; Going around knowing and reminding people of Auston’s likes and dislikes, “You, uh, mentioned it the other day? Yeah, so.”

He should’ve probably noticed right there.

* * *

It’s not only the daydreams, there are dreams too. He recognizes the empty school hallways and he recognizes himself pulling another boy inside an equally empty classroom. He sees himself leaning down for a kiss.

Sometimes he can hear a laugh too, it sounds familiar.

He always feels hollow and warm – he doesn’t know what’s going on.

* * *

Auston finds himself having many midnight chats with Mitch. Mitch’s not really reserved or closed off, but he doesn’t really talk about himself if not asked about things. Tonight they’ve been talking about school and stuff, Auston still doesn’t understand how they never crossed paths on school grounds or Hogsmeade.

“I was going to go to St. Mungos as an apprentice,” Mitch blushes high on his cheeks, it’s pretty, “and my boyfriend was going to study to become an Auror, so we’d both be in London together.”

“Is he here? Your boyfriend?”

The small smile Mitch gives him looks sad and resigned, “No, he isn’t. I haven’t seen him in months.”

Everything about it makes Auston angry, he’s angry at himself for asking and he’s angry at himself putting that awful smile on Mitch’s face. He’s angry at the dumb boyfriend as well. How do you walk away from someone like Mitch?

The guilt he feels comes in waves and it hurts. He really should’ve noticed then.

* * *

Sometimes Auston feels like the longing is suffocating, like this is a waiting game that he's destined to lose.

But he thinks the worst part is that he doesn't know what he's waiting for, although most of the time he feels like he's surrounded by clues he's not getting.

Like he's missing just one piece of the puzzle and he won't be able to figure it out until he can complete it.

* * *

Kissing Mitch feels natural, like a well rehearsed thing. He smiles into the kiss when he feels Mitch doing it, a little soft gasp escaping him when Auston tightens his arms around his waist.

It feels natural to fall into bed with Mitch, too. Like it’s the natural order of things, like it’s a usual thing.

Everything feels familiar, from the way Mitch whines softly to the two seconds it takes him to throw a silencing charm over them, from the way Mitch hides his face on Auston’s shoulder to the way he tightens his legs around his waist.

From the content feeling that fills him as he’s falling asleep with Mitch’s back against his chest to the softness of waking up to his face.

(And that’s really when he should’ve known)

* * *

They’ve been walking for what feels like days going… somewhere.

Auston knows now that no one but Mitch actually knows where they are going, and it’s easy to see how this is affecting him, even if he doesn’t have much to compare it with. No one seems as burdened as Mitch.

It’s easy to catch Mitch rubbing at his temples or closing his eyes and kind of rocking himself as he tries to figure out the way. Auston just wants to hold him, can’t understand why no one does that, even as the circles under Mitch’s eyes get darker.

Auston rarely wishes to have a set of skills different to the ones he does have: he knows his worth and he knows what he’s good at but at times it feels like he would trade those just to be able to help heal Mitch.

* * *

There are times when he wakes up in the middle of the night and the only thing he can hear is a soft crying from outside their tent. It’s never hard to identify who it is.

Sometimes Mitch whispers to whoever is there with him, usually Dylan or Connor, but some other times he talks to himself; Soft whispers to calm himself down and get it together that sound strangely familiar, like Auston has heard them late into the night a thousand times before.

Auston’s tired of being confused by everything that goes around him.

* * *

At some point of their wandering they make it to a small house that has Mitch smiling like a little kid on christmas’ morning, even if it looks like a hard blow of wind could tear it down.

Sometimes Mitch looks like the wind could take him away too.

Auston’s steps falter as he gets closer to it, flashes of his uncle’s hands holding a picture of this house in front of him, like this was the place they were always supposed to make it to.

The yelling brings him back to the meadow, everyone scattering around him, wands out and spells flying around them. The house crumbles before their eyes, flames going up in such a bright color it hurts to look at it, it’s- it’s not important. It stops being important when he can’t find Mitch no matter how much he looks and runs around.

Stromer is half dragging a bleeding Connor and Auston has never seen him look this scared in all of the years he’s known him.

Except he met Dylan just a few months ago.

But he didn’t.

“Dylan!”, he stops next to him, “Dylan, where’s Mitch?!”

“Where’s Mitch. You’re honestly asking me ‘where’s Mitch’?! You can ask your fucking Uncle where Mitch is. He just took him and fucking apparated away-” Connor’s hand on his chest stops him, making Dylan turn back to look at him.

Connor’s face looks hard as a stone when he points his wand at him, “I’m not waiting anymore.”

Auston doesn’t have the words to describe the pain that follows. He honestly never thought he’d be hit with a Cruciatus Curse.

* * *

The pain makes him forget where he is for a very long minute, it almost burned too much to breathe but that doesn’t stop his mind from going wild.

He’d heard that the Cruciatus Curse could make your head feel like it was going to explode but this didn’t feel quite like that - It was more like he was remembering too many things all at once, like there wasn’t enough time in the history of the world for him to go through all his memories.

Everything was laid right in front of his eyes now, all their friends standing right there, surrounding him while he struggled to breathe. No one was moving, they were giving him the space he needed to come back.

* * *

It comes back in patches, from the first smile Mitch gave him on the train when they were giggly eleven years old to the last kiss he gave him before going home for the summer.

The long winter nights sneaking out to play hockey by the castle, Mitch dragging Dylan out while Connor laughed.

Taking Mitch back to Arizona to meet his parents, Mitch being fascinated by all the muggle ways of living and thriving in it.

The first time he sneaked into Mitch’s room. Their first kiss outside a classroom, the first christmas dance, the first time they had sex, their first fight.

The first time he got to wake up next to Mitch and his laugh in the morning.

His uncle telling him that the time had come and it was time to take sides in the war, a choice Auston didn’t get to make.

His memories being taken from him and replaced with something else.

Other kids in his train compartiment, waving to his friends before the summer.

Long winter nights spent by the fire in their common room just laughing around some butterbeer with Zach.

Going back to Arizona and helping his dad fix their car.

The first time he snuck out of his room to go to the astronomy tower. The first time he kissed someone outside a classroom, the first christmas dance he went to, the first time he had sex, the first time he fought someone.

* * *

Dylan’s glaring at him from where he’s standing above him but Connor seems to be smiling, even if it looks a lot more like a grimace and it’s sort of covered in blood. Auston appreciates the try, though.

“Do you get it now? This is all your fault, we wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you and you need to go-” Dylan says, closing his eyes for a second and taking a deep breath, “wherever they are and bring Mitch back, please.”

“I-I don’t know where he took him-” Auston starts.

“You do know, please don’t make me curse you again,” Connor says, sounding like he would laugh if he wasn’t in so much pain.

That comes back to him too, but it might have something to do with Dylan punching him.

* * *

His uncle’s manor had always been breathtaking, specially in days like this one when the clouds loom just above the horizon, the sun looking shy behind them, not strong enough to break through them.

He wonders if that’s what Mitch saw every time he looked at him for the last few months.

Nobody stops Auston on his way in, but why would they? He’s the one that helped them capture one of the most elusive runaway students. The only one of their group that has any important information.

Auston never figured out how his uncle knew that; not that he had time to dwell on it since his memory got taken from him but he’s sure that whatever it is that Mitch knows, it’s something he never shared with Auston.

The silence inside the manor makes chills run up Auston’s arms, the place smells like something putrid is being kept away in one of the many rooms and the pristine white of the walls makes everything feel more eerie.

It doesn’t take long for Auston to get to the opening outside the great hall, he can hear a mush of hushed voices arguing.

He can hear a soft whimpering behind all that.

It seems his uncle and company can’t decide on how to proceed with Mitch, which Auston totally gets: Mitch is unmovable when he needs to be, there’s no one like him. It’s one of the first things he noticed about Mitch, how loyal he was to those he loves, how that loyalty might eventually get him killed.

Auston won’t let that happen, though.

He announces his presence by walking up to his uncle and his minions, playing it up when they congratulate him on a job well done, on manipulating the rest of the group just like they expected him to. Oh boy.

Mitch’s still curled up on the floor when he manages to convince them that he’ll take care of the traitor, as they’ve taken to call Mitch. Auston can see he’s squeezing his eyes shut which is both good and heartbreaking - good because it means he’s awake but heartbreaking because it means he heard him and it’s probably thinking the worst.

“Mitchy,” Auston tries to be as soft as he possibly can when he touches his arm, tries not to recoil himself when Mitch flinches away from him.

Mitch blinks at him slowly, Auston can see his eyes start to fill up with tears as he smiles softly, “Hi Aus, you’re back now?”

By the time Mitch wakes up again they’re away and safe, Auston might not be good at many things but he’s never broken a promise.

* * *

The war goes on for longer than they’d like, considering no one ever wants a war to break out.

It’s also messier than any of them thought. It’s enough of a mess that Auston starts to fear for his own family back in Arizona, back in the muggle world that should keep them safe and out of this.

Mitch insists on going back out to help any way he can, argues that if all his friends are out there in danger then he needs to be out there supporting them. In the end they both end up doing what they’re best at: Mitch helps out at the medical camps wherever and however he can while Auston helps with the protection and the logistics of relocating the people affected by the whole thing.

* * *

They get to watch the end of the war from the other side of the world, their friends, families and whoever else they managed to get there, safe in Arizona.

Auston gets to wake up to Mitch sleepily blinking at him before smiling and that’s how he knows they’ll be okay.

Everything will be okay.


End file.
